Sociology education

• Functionalists


  View education as a key aspect of socialisation which ensures individuals understand social roles and acts as a form of social solidarity
• Functionalist view of education


  • Optimistic about the role of education for society
  • Believe education prepares people for their future roles
• New Right


  • Believe education system should run like a business and enable parents to have a choice to send their kid to school
  • Believe school gives chances to everyone
• New Right view of education


  • Marketisation is beneficial to the education system as it helps improve standards
• Functionalist views


  Ignore the inequalities in the school system and fail to see the negative experience in school
• New Right thinkers


  Have been criticised for failing to acknowledge that when a choice is introduced not all students are able to utilise the choices available for example transport costs
• Conflict Theories


  Take a negative view on education, including Marxism and Feminism
• Marxist view of education


  • Education system acts as a means of socialising children into their respective class position
  • Education system supports capitalism by ensuring working class students are prepared for mundane labour and middle class students are encouraged for higher levels of education
• Pierre Bourdieu


  Middle class possess cultural capital and places them at an advantage, and the middle class controls the education system therefore putting working class students at a disadvantage
• Louis Althusser


  Education legitimises inequalities through subconsciously introducing a particular set of ideas, and is an ideological state apparatus through which the ruling class transmit their values
• Bowles and Gintis- education serves to reproduce the capitalist relations of production. Hierarchy extist in school and work. Day is in segments that resembles work
• Feminist view of education


  Education system perpetuates a patriarchal ideology leading girls into lower paid jobs, and women were being overlooked in girls' education
• Functionalist and New Right views

  Disagree with the Marxist view and believe education gives opportunity to everyone, and the Feminist view has been criticised for undermining girls' educational achievement
• Postmodernist view of education


  • Education reflects the increasing individualism in society and that is reflected in educational policy as well
  • Individual identity is becoming more fluid such as faith or technical schools
  • Education specialists and politicians today are learning much more about education styles around the world and incorporating them into the UK education system
  • There is also been a greater demand of technology
• Interpretivist view of education


  They don't regard education as neither positive or negative, for instance the way children are labelled and how it affects their education and later life and if it creates self-fulfilling prophecy
• Interpretivist and Postmodernist views


  Despite taking a more contemporary approach to understanding the role of education, they continue to persist and do not help to explain why such inequalities in education for example why working class students continue to underperform, and they ignore structural inequalities and both fail to suggest how these might be overcome
• Meritocracy


  Jobs and pay are allocated due to individual talent and achievements
• Durkheim


  Creating social solidarity and teaches specialist skills. This is done by the hidden curriculum and the actual curriculum
• Parsons

  • Meritocracy
  • Bridge between family and society
  • secondary socialisation
• Davis and Moore


  Role allocation - education allocate different students into different jobs
• Critisms of Marxist

  • lack of detailed research
  • tend to be deterministic
• Chubb and Moore

  • New right
  • failed the needs of disadvantaged grouos
  • school is inefficient to produce pupils with skills
  • private schools deliver higher quality education
• Critisms of new right

  • real cause of low educational standards is because of social inequalities and not the school